“My sister passed that day at Le Puy. In spite of innumerable obstacles she succeeded in seeing the citoyen Guyardin. She conjured him to have an inquiry made with respect to my mother’s conduct and to forward it to Paris. He did not move, remained seated at his bureau, and continued writing, while she was addressing him in the most urgent manner. He refused to read a letter from my mother handed to him by Anastasie, saying that he could not trouble himself about a prisoner who was summoned to Paris, and adding most vulgar jokes to his refusal. My unfortunate sister left the room in a most violent state of despair and indignation. The cruel Guyardin did not grant her the necessary permission to travel out of the department and to follow my mother’s carriage, and my poor sister, in despair, was obliged to let M. Frestel set off without her.
“My mother arrived in Paris on the 19th of Prairial, three days before the decree of the 22d, which organized une terreur dans la Terreur. At that time no less than sixty people were daily falling victims of the Revolutionary Tribunal. All seemed to forebode approaching death to my mother. You may fancy the anguish of mind in which we spent the two months which followed my mother’s departure for Paris. We were daily expecting to hear of the greatest misfortune which could befall us. Towards that time the château of Chavaniac and the furniture were sold.
“The peasants of the commune brought us with hearty good will all that was necessary for our subsistence. Every day it was reported that my aunt and my sister were to be sent to the prison of Brioude, whilst my brother and myself were to be taken to the hospital. As for my mother, the life she was leading at La Petite Force was dreadful. At the end of a fortnight my mother was transferred to Le Plesis. This building, formerly a college where my father had been educated, had been turned into a prison.
“Since the law of the 22d of Prairial, the Revolutionary Tribunal sent each day sixty persons to the scaffold. One of the buildings of Le Plesis served as a depot to the Conciergerie, so every morning twenty prisoners could be seen departing for the guillotine. ‘The thought of soon being one of the victims,’ my mother wrote, ‘makes one endure such a sight with more firmness.’ Twice she fancied that she was being called to take her place amongst the victims.
“My mother passed forty days at La Force and Le Plesis, expecting death at every moment. In the midst of the tumult caused by the revolution of the 10th Thermidor, it was for a moment believed that fresh massacres would take place in the prisons; but soon afterward the news of Robespierre’s death reached the captives, and it became known to them that the executions of the Revolutionary Tribunal had ceased. My mother’s first thought was to send to the Luxembourg. The jailer’s answer revealed to her the fearful truth. My grandmother, with my aunt de Noailles and the Maréchale de Noailles had been sent to the scaffold on the 4th Thermidor: the three generations perished together. How can I give you an idea of my mother’s despair? ‘Return thanks to God,’ she wrote to us later, ‘for having preserved my strength, my life, my reason; do not regret that you were far from me. God kept me from revolting against Him, but for a long time I could not have borne the slightest appearance of human comfort.’”
BEFORE THE REVOLUTIONARY TRIBUNAL.
Madame La Fayette in her “Life of the Duchesse d’Ayen” gives the following interesting though painful particulars regarding the execution of her mother, grandmother, and sister:—
“My mother and my sister were put under arrest in the first days of October, but allowed to remain well guarded at the Hôtel de Noailles. A month later I myself was taken as a prisoner to Brioude, and it became still more difficult to correspond.
“Persecutions went on increasing. One day the detenus had to answer questions on their actions and on their thoughts. My mother and my sister were prepared, and answered those who questioned them with their usual tact and straightforwardness. The inventory of all that was in their possession was drawn up. My mother, fearing she might be made to swear that she had concealed nothing, had hung to her side, in the shape of a watch chain, all the diamonds which were left her. They were not taken; she sold them that same day to a jeweller, who gave her immediately the money she required to pay the small debts which were owing, but she never received the full amount of what was due her, the jeweller having been beheaded on the following day.